My two co-PIs on the project came to visit and it was a ruckus time, to say the least. Doug somehow managed to arrive right when we went on break, so I took him diving. The seas were choppy, but we managed to see three spotted eels on the second dive of the day. Yemane arrived a coupe days later and my week was divided between getting project business done and guiding the two of them around. It was perhaps the most fun of the season, though I did little work. We're building a house for the ethnographers on the project, and they had to haul lots of palm leaf for the thatch roof. Now we're in the last week of study and I'm looking at 15 hour days until Saturday. Wish me luck!

The heat continues so I'll just quit whining about it after I note that it was only 96 degrees yesterday with about 90% humidity. It was in this heat that I saw a bunch of 7-10 year old boys chopping the grass in front of the school with razor sharp machetes. They get their first machete when they are about seven years old, and those kids were good, clearing the entire hillside in about ten minutes.

We have divided our time for the last week between 5 teams of students excavating small-to-large settlement groups of 1-5 buildings each, mapping, and some side projects. The settlement excavations are the main focus of the last couple weeks of work. As we identify and map in architecture of elites and commons we are also generating spatial data to match the excavations. Here's some pictures of Claire and Neri (mapper in training). We also visited a rather interesting rockshelter up in the karst mountains surrounding the site. We'll do some excavations there on some human-constructed terraces. One drawback was the mosquitos, which were so thick we had to burn an old termite nest at lunch to keep them at bay.

Today and tomorrow I'm at the beach, finally! It's nice to sit by the sea, soaking the bug bites, and enjoy a nice dinner with the ocean breezes. Here's a picture of the view from my balcony (at $45 a night its quite the deal), and I saw an iguana on a hot tin roof.

It has been a busy last few weeks since I updated this blog. We have grown to about 10 people, plus 16 workers excavating at Uxbenka. The work has been exciting, hot, buggy, strenuous, and rewarding. In one plaza set back from the road we have found excavated an Early Classic (ca 400 AD) shrine complex in a large residential complex. We completed excavations at another shrine, far in the mountains, where I brought in an intrepid crew form California, the UK, and Hawaii. Despite the brutal conditions they did a great job documenting what may be the first large mountain shrine complex in the Maya Lowlands. Excavations have produced some really wonderful artifacts and even more interesting information. In between, on our occasional days off people have found time to swim into caves, visit other ruins, and mostly lounge around, enjoying a few cold beers in the evening. We only have three more weeks of work, but I plan to post at least three more blog-posts in that time.